this the life that everybody ask for

For a good chunk of my childhood, my uncle, aunt, and little cousin lived in the first-floor apartment in my house. My cousin, whom we shall call Ann because that was her name, was two years younger than me. Because neither of us had a sister, we had somewhat of a sisterly relationship between us. The crucial difference being, of course--besides that whole "mom loves you better than me" thing--that when one of us got on the other's nerves, we could just go to our own house. It was brilliant.

(Though, I have to say, this was the source of an important life lesson for me. One day when I was probably ten or so, Ann was upstairs playing at my house and my BFF Debbie called and asked if she could come over. So I told Ann she had to go home. Lemme tell you, when my mother found out I had done that, she was *so* angry with me. I got in so much trouble. I swear, I hadn't done it to be mean. It hadn't even occurred to me I was being mean. But, ohmygod, once it was forcefully pointed out to me, I've never done that shit again.)

Anyway, often when we got home from school, if neither of us was doing anything else, I would go downstairs to Ann's house. And when I was in fourth or fifth grade, what would happen is this: Ann would beg me to play Barbies, I would say no, she would beg some more, and then I would "give in." Except, actually, I wanted to play Barbies all along but was supposed to be too old and too cool to do that, so I had to pretend I was doing her the favor. We would act out these elaborate soap operas, many of which would leave Barbie and friends nekkid, limbless, with unfortunate humiliating haircuts, etc. I'm sure a psychologist would have had a field day.

What brings this up? I woke up out of this dream I was having this morning (in which I was staying at a hotel at a conference with three other people and the toilet above our room exploded, ruining all our stuff, and infuriatingly, the hotel was only going to buy us one set of clothes in recompense, but dolls were also involved somehow) and for some reason, it occurred to me that writing fiction was the [somewhat] socially acceptable equivalent of playing Barbies for adults. You get to make up all these people and what they do and say and think and feel and wear and where they go and how they get there, and if they end up nekkid and limbless, oh well. Of course, when you're *really* writing fiction, you have to worry about things like plausible plotting and consistent characterization and interesting dialogue blah blah. Buzzkill. So, y'know, you can always just make up stories to yourself about the people on the bus. Ahem.

xoxo